# single-handedness
## English
### Alternative forms

* singlehandedness

### Etymology

From single-handed +‎ -ness.

### Noun

single-handedness (uncountable)
* The quality of having a dominant hand; left-handedness or right-handedness.
** 1907, The New England Medical Gazette - Volume 42, page 325:Recent experiments and observations, however, prove that single-handedness is merely the result of faulty or restricted education. Careful observations have shown that out of every hundred persons born into this world eighty are congenitally ambidextrous — that is to say, they will instinctively reach for an object with either hand
** 1913, Albert Henry Buck, A Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences:But as we rise in the evolutionary scale of normal creatures, and as we exclude disease, ambidexterity progressively gives way to single-handedness, generally right-handedness.
** 1936 January, “Hand Test for Stutterers Aids in Treatment”, in Popular Mechanics, volume 65, number 1, page 56:One step in my method of correcting the stutterer is to build up a single-handedness or sidedness in the individual.
* Chirality
** 2000, Nina Berova, Koji Nakanishi, Robert Woody, Circular Dichroism: Principles and Applications, →ISBN, page 529:In the complexes, the direction and affinity of the hydroxy group for hydrogen bond toward the carboxy group of poly-12 may be the most important factor to control both the helical sense and an extent of the single-handedness, and therefore, the complexes with amino alcohols showed an intense ICD independent of the bulkiness of the substituent (R) with the same Cotton effect signs as the primary amines.
** 2008, CIBA Foundation Symposium, Biological Asymmetry and Handedness, →ISBN, page 26:So not only does the hand of the amino acids dictate the hand of the helix they form, but more profoundly, single-handedness appears to be necessary for helices to form at all.
** 2009, Joseph Cambray, Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe, →ISBN:In scientific language this preferred single-handedness is referred to as homochirality; nature clearly exhibits this, but the exact origins of this trait remain shrouded at present, though various theories have been postulated to try to explain how it first arose.
* Lack of assistance.
** 2004, Samir Dasgupta, The Changing Face of Globalization, →ISBN:The process practices autarchy, exclusivism or single-handedness instead of a radical universalism, based on democracy and equality that can be achieved through a united struggle.
** 2006, Judith Collier, J. A. B. Collier, J. Murray Longmore, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties, →ISBN:In the UK, much of the progress in general practice over the recent past has evolved in the context of group practice and the primary health care team — the credo of modern-day doctoring. Single-handedness puts a question mark over the primacy and validity of these ideas.
** 2007, Patrick Buckridge, Belinda McKay, By the Book: A Literary History of Queensland, →ISBN, page 7:Confronting the task nearly half a century later of making sense of Queensland's literary heritage, it seemed foolhardy to emulate our predecessors in their heroic single-handedness.
* The quality of having or involving the use of only one hand.
** 2006, Neil William Lerner, Joseph Nathan Straus, Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, →ISBN, page 75:Maurice Ravel wrote a Concerto pour piano en sol majeur for both a left hand and a right hand, whereas the Concerto pour la main gauche marks itself as different in its declaration of single-handedness.
** 2009, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look, →ISBN:Although an extended period of visual contemplation may lead a viewer to notice the pianist's single-handedness, the scene encourages admiration for the achievement of technical skill against what are imagined as great odds.
** 2012, Joe Fisher, Coming Back Alive: The Case for Reincarnation, →ISBN:First, imagine the minute hand has been removed so that the dial is complete in every detail but for its single-handedness.
** 2013, Gerald Abraham, Peter Calvocoressi, Masters of Russian Music, →ISBN:Through over-practice of Balakiref's "Islamey" and Liszt's "Don Juan" Fantasia, he temporarily lost the use of his right hand. He regained it after a time, but it was during this period of single-handedness that he wrote the well-known “Prelude and Nocturne for the left hand only”, as well as a left-handed concert-paraphrase of a Strauss waltz, which has never been published.